Joe Rogan Experience #1274 - Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of behavior, health, and longevity. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the Co-Director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.

Joe RoganhostNicholas ChristakisguestJamie Vernonhost

Mar 28, 20192h 21mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,120 words

0:00 – 5:22
Yale Halloween costume controversy: what happened and why it blew up
1. JRJoe Rogan
  The gay folks took over the rainbow. Four, three, two. Will it work today, Jamie? Yes. Hello, Nicholas.
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  Hey, Joe. How are you, man?
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Great to meet you.
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  It's really good to meet you, too.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, I became aware of you, like many people did, with the infamous Halloween costume incident at Yale, uh, where, uh... Explain that for people who don't know what happened 'cause it was-
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  Um.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... kind of, kind of a crazy scene. It went national.
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes. It was, um, a moment when, um, around the country, many students were struggling with how to balance a conflicting, um, sort of needs and-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Try to keep that a little bit closer-
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  Con-
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to your face. There you go.
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... conflicting needs, uh, w- uh, wha- how on the one hand, to create an environment in schools where peop- everyone sort of felt welcome.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  As we've democratized, uh, admissions to our American universities, as I think we should have, people from all walks of life have started moving into these institutions, claiming them for their own, which I think is appropriate. But at the same time, these institutions had wonderful heritages of commitment to free expression and open debate and, um, and reason as a principle for resolving our differences. And, uh, s- and some of those values came into tension. And so around the country, there was a lot of, um, heat about this, and I happened to walk into a propeller, uh, myself.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  And, um, and wound up, um, in some challenging, uh, circumstances and, um, y- you know, I, I, uh, it was not, uh, it was not the, um, worst thing that's ever happened to me, but, you know, it was in the top 10, uh, challenging moments I've had in my life, let's say.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, that's a very lawyer-like way of describing exactly what happened. (laughs)
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  (laughs) Well, I, well, I, yes. I mean, the thing is, I, you know, I, I, I, uh, you know, I struggle... I mean, you can tell the story if you want-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... and then I can correct things, but here's the thing is, uh, it's my job to be a teacher.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  And I have taken responsibility for teaching young people, and it is the case that many people, uh, lost their s- their minds. I mean, lost-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
24. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... their senses. And, and, and the faculty too, incidentally. I mean, you know, ther- it's one thing to talk about people in their, and college-aged people, but then d- you know, the faculty also didn't d- necessarily do what they should've done. But, um, but, uh, the, the, the thing is is that y- you know, m- my commitment, it, my commitment is to, is to teaching more generally, and I don't wanna be defined by that event. I don't want that to become a, the most important thing about me. You know, I have this book-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
26. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... this book that we're gonna talk about that is an important, uh, f- thing in my life. It instantiates my values. It talks about what I think is important about the world. So, so I'm trying to be balanced about it. Just, it's one thing that happened. I did my best. It's in the past.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, let me, let me help out here because you're being so nice about the whole thing. Um, d- so people know what we're talking about. There was a, an incident that was captured on someone's cellphone where you were standing there-
28. NCNicholas Christakis
  There's th- many people. It was an hour of footage-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
30. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... five or six different angles, so a clip went viral.
5:22 – 9:56
The email’s real argument: should universities police expression?
1. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that you were subjected to that when you're being very reasonable. And also, what it all came about was your wife had-
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  (laughs)
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... sent out an email saying like, "Hey, maybe it should be okay for someone to wear a fucked up Halloween costume." You know?
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  "Maybe it's okay to, for someone to dress up like Crazy Horse," you know?
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah. Well, well, actually, just to be clear, what Erika was saying in that note, uh, was not... Uh, this is a very important intellectual distinction. I think we've, we've lost a lot of nuance in our political lives in general in our country right now-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... and also in the, in the nuance in the way we think about difficult topics. So what Erika was saying was not that necessarily the pe- she was not taking a position on any particular costumes, like this is okay. In fact, many-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... of the costumes that would have offended the students would offend her. What she was saying was that she didn't think the, uh, university should be telling students what to wear.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  She, and she was asking the students, "Do you students real- at this age at Yale, do you really want the university to be sending you guidance on what to wear? Perhaps you should think about that."
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  "You're adults, you're smart, you're in an environment that privileges free expression. Do you really want to grant the power..."... to an institution to tell you how to communicate.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  And people then, uh, thought that she was saying that, uh, that she was defending a particular course of action. What she was saying was, um, d- w- d- y- you, uh, d- she was saying, "Do you students really want to surrender that kind of control over your own lives to older adults?" And apparently, many students d- did, actually. They wanted t- th- they did, so-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't... believe they did. I think they wanted absolute enforcement of what they thought to be wrong or right.
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes. Yes, I think that's right. So they, they, they, uh, they... d- i- th- th- th- many, but not all of the students, I mean, let's b- let's also be very clear and, m- eh, eh, part of the motivation in, in Erika, uh, writing that note was that, uh, many, uh, many of her students, and in fact, many hundreds of other students, felt infantilized by this policy. And there had been a big build up prior to that event, including an article in the New York Times about these Halloween costume policies around the country, and weren't they kind of ridiculous? And so there was a lo- there was a, kind of a, a, a ferment where people were saying, "Wait a minute, do we really need adults to be told in this institution, especially given its commitments to open expression, uh, what to wear?" And keep in mind that there could be many ways in which a costume that offends you might not, might, I might not know why. So let's say you had been abused by a priest, and you were, uh, that one of the, the rules said you shouldn't, uh, mock religion, for example, was what one of the pr- one of the provisions. So, so a, a, a university-wide email went out signed by 13 people saying, um, you know, "Don't, don't, uh, don't mock people's deeply-held faith traditions." Well, what if, for the sake of argument, you had been a, uh, abused by a priest and you wanted, at Halloween, to dress up as a Catholic priest, for example, um, you know, holding a, a doll? And someone else who had a different, r- who was Catholic was very deeply offended by that. Well, who should adjudicate that? Like w- you know, d- is it the role of the, the institution to come down and say, "Yes, you can express yourself this way. No, you cannot." And so the argument was let the young people learn, let them sort it out themselves, let them learn by talking to each other, expressing themselves, saying, "You know, that hurts my feelings. Here's why it hurts my feelings." And the other person said, "Oh, I understand," or, "I don't understand. I reject that reason." And, and sort of buy into a kind of commitment to free and open expression that actually, I think, ultimately serves the objectives of righteous social progress. If we really wanna do better in our society, or in any society, in my view, we have to create an environment where we can talk to each other, grant good faith, uh, listen carefully, make subtle distinctions, and, and free people up to express what they're thinking so we can have a real marketplace of ideas. Th- that's, you know, m- my commitment, or my belief.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, that's a wonderful belief.
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  (laughs)
21. JRJoe Rogan
  I love it. I mean, that's really, I, I, I couldn't agree with you more, m- more enthusiastically. That's really th- that sounds like the best possible environment-
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  W-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  ... for growing up and learning as long as you have someone to sort of moderate, or someone to mediate if things go s- sideways.
9:56 – 17:49
Free speech as a tool for truth: reason over force or voting
1. NCNicholas Christakis
  Y- y- yes, or I don't think you necessarily need a, a third-party mediator, but you do need a shared understanding of, of, uh, core liberal principles. Uh, and these principles do include, as I mentioned earlier, a kind of commitment to free and open expression, a commitment to debate, a commitment to reason. So how are you and I going to come to a better understanding of what is true about the world? We could fight, right? And then the m- the stronger person would decide what's right. We could vote. T- doesn't seem quite right either. You know, if 350 cardinals voted that Galileo was wrong, that didn't make Galileo wrong. Or we could use principles of reason and inquiry to try to appreciate the world together, right? We're looking out at the world and saying, "That's confusing." You know, does the sun... does the Earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the Earth? Or that's confusing. Should a king have monarch- you know, should a king have ultimate authority in a state? Or is that not how we want to organize a state? So we, you and I, look at the world and debate and think about, okay, and we exchange reasons, and we use e- e- eh- eh- evidence and ways of understanding and studying the world. That, to me, is the only way to truth, actually. Now some people will think that religion is a way to truth, right? They think that the truth is, you know, is God-given, for example. Now, I, I am very sympathetic to religious belief systems, but I don't think that's a way to truth. It's a way to some truths, actually. It's a way to some, some wisdom. But anyway, so that's what our universities and our society... Our universities are officially committed to that. The mottos of our universities are all about free inquiry and pursuit of knowledge. And our country is committed to that in our Bill of Rights, right? We have a commitment to free and open expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and so forth. And, and those ground rules then, in my view, make it possible for us to have a better society. And, and there's more I could talk about. I'm sure we will get into it.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  No, I'm sure we will. Those-
3. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  ... again, couldn't agree with you more-
5. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  ... enthusiastically. I just think we need more reasonable conversations-
7. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and less screaming and less shouting people down-
9. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and less stopping-
11. NCNicholas Christakis
  Less mob action, I thinks.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes, yes. The mob action is v- very weird because I don't remember it.
13. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, I-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Eh, from the like, of, from the Vietnam War protests to what's going on today, there was this long gap where d- you didn't hear about universities shutting down speech.
15. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  This is fairly new. This is within the last, uh, half-decade or so.
17. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, let's not... Yeah, e- mm- yes-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  More?
19. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... yes. I mean, there are always, there's, there's always an undercurrent of tension about this at, at universities and in our society at large. Uh, you know, let's not forget the McCarthy era where you had the right wing was, you know, really interested in shutting down communists.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
21. NCNicholas Christakis
  Like if you were a pro- professor or an artist who had far left political views, you were screwed.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
23. NCNicholas Christakis
  And that was wrong and-
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Or even if you'd won- went to a communist meeting-
25. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to find out what it was all about.
27. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Just to educate yourself.
29. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes. Yes, in fact, that's a great example because that... Like right now, I see a lot of people being criticized for following online people they disagree with.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
17:49 – 20:53
Echo chambers, anti-vax beliefs, and ‘unfalsifiable’ conspiracies
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. And just an honest assessment of the actual data, like what we really know and understanding how these scientists come-
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to these conclusions. But the, the problem is these echo chambers where people get involved with online-
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that magnify, uh, all of these beliefs, and you get radicalized. I mean, I've seen it-
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  Also true.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  People get involved in these Facebook groups, these anti-vax face-
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... Facebook groups or, you know, all, all sorts of different things. I mean, that's how these flat Earth people get going.
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  They, they b- start listening only to people that are involved in this circle. They don't have a, a greater understanding of the science involved-
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and d-
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  Did you just see, I just saw online there's a, uh, a cruise to the flat or cruise for flat Earther. I don't know if you saw it?
15. JRJoe Rogan
  To the ice wall.
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah, the ice wall. (laughs)
17. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  (laughs) I thought-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  (yawning sound)
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  (laughs) I thought, that's a new wrinkle, 'cause the-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... old flat-Earthers used to think that the water was shown falling off the disc of the earth, you know-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
24. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... like the e- edge of the earth, it was just a disc?
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
26. NCNicholas Christakis
  Now, the new theory that there's an ice wall actually, it, is, it's kind of not falsifiable, b- that is to say you, you could get on a cruise and sail to the edge of the earth, and you would find a wall of ice there. So you, Antarctica, or the-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
28. NCNicholas Christakis
  So you think, "Ah! It's flat." Uh, in other words, they, they, they have redefined their theory to, to make it so that you can't disprove it.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
30. NCNicholas Christakis
  Right? You don't get to an edge. There's no edge. There's an ice wall, is what they're saying now. Anyway.
20:53 – 23:10
Risk, rare harms, and the public health logic of vaccination
1. JRJoe Rogan
  And then there's a problem of nuance and perspective, because there's so many people that get vaccinated. There's hundreds of millions of people in this country, billions of people worldwide, and then there are instances, rare occurrences-
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  ... where people have real issues-
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... with vaccinations.
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, there e- there are some where they have real issues, so for example, there's some vaccines which are known to cause certain neurological conditions, rarely, one out of a million, or one out of 100,000 vaccinations.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  More commonly is the situation in which you have vaccination is so common, everyone is getting vaccinated, and often, that occurs near to an occurrence of some other rare condition-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... and people associate the two.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  They think, "Oh, because of the vaccine this happened." No, it's a coincidence. So...
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Either or, yes. There's both, and the e- and there's also, you know, if it's one out of a million, and you have 300 million people-
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  Exactly.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you have three million-
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you know, I mean, o- one million people with an issue is a big deal.
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? With 300 million people-
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you, you easily could have 300 really big cases.
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  You know, 300 cases where people-
24. NCNicholas Christakis
  Of something, yes.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... died from vaccines.
26. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  And then you bring those in front of people and say, "Oh my God," and then there's this one, and this one, and this one, and there's 298 more-
28. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  ... and you're like, "Holy shit."
30. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
23:10 – 29:23
‘Blueprint’ begins: why humans befriend, love, cooperate, and teach
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Um, but that's obviously neither here nor there. So, (gavel sound) this book, uh, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. When did you start this?
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  About nine or ten years ago.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  Uh, and I, at the time in my lab we were doing research on friendship, we were doing research on, on why people have friends. It, it's actually, it's not, it's not difficult to provide an account for why we have sex with each other, um, many animals, m- most animals are s- well, I don't know if it's most, but, uh, uh, uh, animals either reproduce sexually or asexually, and m- most animals, I'm trying to remember now what the relative proportion is. Anyway, I'ma say most, most animals reproduce sexually, and it's not hard to provide an account for how, um, for why, uh, we, why sex originated, why we reproduce sexually. It's not hard to provide an account for why we are choosy in our mates, or why we, uh, are careful in who we have sex with. But human beings don't just mate with each other, we befriend each other. We form long-term, non-reproductive unions to other individuals to whom we're not related. Why? That's very rare in the animal kingdom. Very few creatures do this. We do it, certain other primates, elephants, certain whales, and that's mostly it. So, the question is, why? So I became very interested in my lab in trying to understand the deep origins of friendship. Why would natural selection have equipped us with this capacity? And that set the stage then for an exploring all kinds of other things in our lives, like why we love each other, for example. Why do we, why do we, we, when we have, uh, sex with a, a person, we tend to become attached to them, we develop emotional sentiment, uh, about them. That's not an essential to having sex, yet we do that. And then I became interested in other kinds of good things, like not just love and friendship, but cooperation, and teaching. Teaching is another crazy thing.... we take it for granted that we teach each other. But think about this, most animals are able to learn. So a little fish in the ocean learns that if it swims to the light, it finds more food there. So the fish then learns to, to, to be tropic, to, to move towards the light. Uh, and that's individual learning. Some animals, uh, develop what's called social learning. Social learning is really efficient, so if I put my hand in the fire, I learn that I burned myself, I pull my hand out. I've learned something. I paid a price and I learned something. I could observe you putting your hand in the fire. You pay all the price, but I gain most of the knowledge. It's almost as good. I learn, "Oh, people, you shouldn't put your hand in the fire. I saw that Joe-"
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  "... put his hand in the fire." So social learning is super efficient, learning from others. But we take it to an even further level. We don't just passively observe other, uh, other animals of our own species and learn from them, we teach each other. That is very rare in the animal kingdom, where one animal sets out to teach another animal something. So the book is, uh, is, is, uh, is about the evolutionary origins of a good society. It's also a kind of, uh, response, a kind of pushback to a, a long tradition in the sciences of attention to the bad parts of our nature. You know, uh, scientists, in my view, have for too long been looking at the origins of, of murder, and tribalism, and selfishness, and, uh, mendacity. Um, but, but I think the bright side has been denied the attention it deserves, because we have also evolved to love, and to befriend each other, and to be kind to each other, and to cooperate, and to teach each other, and all these good things. And I'll shut up. (laughs) And, and, uh-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Please don't.
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  Uh, uh, no. And, uh, and here's the thing. Here's the sort of one way to think about this. This must have been the case that the benefits of a connected life outweighed the costs. We would not be living socially if my exposure to you harmed me, uh, on net. In other words, if I came near you and you, uh, were violent to me, you killed me, or you gave me misinformation, you told me lies about the world, then my connection to you would ultimately harm me, that I should be better off living as an isolated animal. So animals that come together to live socially, their, the benefits of that must outweigh the costs. My living, us living as a group. So all this attention to the ways in which our interactions are bad, that we kill each other, that we steal from each other, that we lie to each other, that we have tribalism, and all of these traits, which we do. Every century is replete with horrors. I'm not like Pangloss, like I don't think like, you know, Pollyanna, like, "Oh, everything's great." That's not me. But what is me is a kind of optimistic focus on the good parts of our, of human nature, and the recognition that those good parts must, in toto, overwhelm the bad parts.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, they certainly have to. There's so many human beings. I mean, it's-
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... obvious that this is working.
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes. (laughs) Yes!
13. JRJoe Rogan
  You know? I mean, we have propagated, we're everywhere.
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  We're on every single patch of land that's occupiable.
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  In fact, you're, you're exactly right. It, the argument, and that's discussed in the book, the way we have achieved the kind of social conquest of the Earth, the way our species is, is, has spread out to occupy every niche, which is also very rare. Most animals live in one, you know, grizzlies live in, in this part of the world.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  They don't live in Amazonia. And, uh, you know, polar bears live in this part of the world. They don't live in, in, uh, Arizona, et cetera. So, so, uh, the, but our species lives everywhere, and the way we have come to be able to do that is by the capacity to have culture, to teach and learn from each other, to accumulate knowledge. So in the book, I talk about lots of this, uh, f- famous set of stories called The Lost European Explorer Files, about how European explorers are, uh, lost, they lose their supplies, they wind up dying, and, um, but they're in an environment in which other people thrive and s- and survive, because they have learned to, how to live there. So we've spread out around the world. And then there'll, there's a chapter in the book at the beginning about shipwrecks. So, so I have this, uh, should I go on?
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure, please.
29:23 – 34:41
The ‘forbidden experiment’ and real-world proxies: shipwreck societies
1. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah. So I have this, uh, so I have this, uh, th- so, so what I'd like to do is, what I try to set out to do in the beginning of the book is I say, look, it's clear that our genes shape the structure and function of our bodies. It is increasingly clear that our genes also strake- shape the structure and function of our minds, our behaviors. Whether you're risk-averse, uh, how intelligent you are, uh, uh, whether you, uh, have wanderlust. Uh, these properties are properties that depend in part on your genes. But it's also clear to me, and that's what the book argues is that our genes shape not just the structure and function of our bodies, not just the structure and function of our minds, but also the structure and function of our societies. And to really prove that, what we would need is something known as the forbidden experiment. And the forbidden experiment is an experiment in which we took a group of babies who had never been taught anything, who are acultural, had no culture, and stranded them on an island, and left them on their own to see what kind of society they would make when they grew up. You know, how would they organize themselves socially? Is there kind of an innate society that human beings are, are pre-wired to make, in an essence? Now, obviously that's unethical and cruel, but actually, monarchs for thousands of years have contemplated this experiment. So Herodotus writes in, about how one of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs wanted to know what kind of language would, w- what was a natural language we had in us that we would speak if we were not taught a language? So this pharaoh, it is said, took two babies and gave them to a mute shepherd to raise to see how did the children speak when they grew up. And, uh, and, and, and, uh, uh, Emperor Akbar attempted this, there was a couple of European kings that attempted this.... obviously we can't actually do this, so what I do in the book is I look at a series of other approximations of that, and one chapter is devoted to looking at shipwrecks, groups of men typically, but sometimes men and women, who between 1500 and 1900, there were 9,000 shipwrecks, many more thousands of ships were lost at sea. And in 20 of those cases, we found 20 cases where, uh, at least 19 people were stranded for at least two months, and, uh, you know, here's a, there's a, a kind of, um, here's a map of the, uh, well here's one crew I can tell you about, but here's a map of the, of the shipwrecks, like these are the-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh wow.
3. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... the all over the world, uh, where they occurred, and, uh, when they occurred and how many people there were, and, uh, and so then I, I, uh, I got all the original accounts from the sailors, uh, from the people on the wrecks, and all contemporary archaeological excavations of those wrecks wh- where they had been excavated, and, um, and tried to understand what kind of society did these isolated crews actually wind up making. And there were some amazing stories that were, uh, uh, uh, that I found in there.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  So, they stayed for at least two months.
5. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  How many of them actually established a real civilization? How many were stuck forever?
7. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well they didn't ... No, no one was stuck forever, uh, most of those crews were eventually ... In fact, all of those crews had at least one survivor because if they had all died, uh, then I wouldn't be able to know about them.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Right, you would have never got the story.
9. NCNicholas Christakis
  But there's the one famous case in which these s- sailors, uh, were stranded in, near Australia, I think somewhere in the Pacific, and they managed to catch a big petrel, one of those huge birds that, you know, like a condor.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
11. NCNicholas Christakis
  And, uh, and they, they, they put a little note in a little tiny bottle and they tied it to its feet, and this petrel flew thousands of miles and landed in Australia, and was found with a note indicating where the i- stranded sailors were.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Whoa.
13. NCNicholas Christakis
  And a ship was sent to go find the men, and it got there but they had all died, they were all gone, so they (laughs) used this-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
15. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... this, uh, this bird, so, so-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  They should have ate the bird.
17. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well no, they didn't eat the bird, they put the-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  They should've.
19. NCNicholas Christakis
  No, (laughs) .
20. JRJoe Rogan
  They'd still be alive.
21. NCNicholas Christakis
  I think if you had that choice, you would communicate rather than eat, Joe, I think.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
23. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  For a little bit.
25. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, until the very end, yes.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Then I started eating those birds.
27. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes, yes. But, uh-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Did they starve to death? Did they know what happened to them?
29. NCNicholas Christakis
  We don't know, nobody knows, but the point is that we have to have a, for me to be able to describe what happened, we needed at least one survivor.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
34:41 – 37:45
Intentional communities, communes, and the universals beneath cultural variation
1. NCNicholas Christakis
  It's a very different outcome for various reasons. So anyway, so the, the point is that in the book, I start with a series of stories about how people come together to make, attempt to make new civilizations. I use the example of unintentional communities with, uh, with shipwrecks, I have, I looked then at intentional communities like communes, and, um, and, uh, kibbutzes in Israel, and, uh, 1970s communes in the United States, uh, 19th century communes in the United States. Actually going back to Roman times, there have always been groups of people who've said, "Society's fucked up. I'm gonna go and we're gonna make it again, you know, we're gonna start afresh." Um, I look at settlements in Antarctica of, uh, scientists, I look at the Pitcairn, you know, the mutiny on the Bounty, I look at the Shackleton expedition. Many, many cases of stranded, isolated groups of people trying to make a new social order. And then I also use data from, um, experiments we do in my lab, we have this software where tens of thousands of people have come and played these games. We, we can create these temporary, artificial societies of real people, where people come and spend an hour or two and we, with this god-like way can engineer the society. We can have a lot of inequality or little inequality, or various other features, and then we can observe what happens, and I look at all of that data, all those stories, and say, "Look, there is a deep and fundamental way that no matter what, human beings, uh, make a society." There are underlying, fundamental principles about society which are as innate as the fact that you have two kidneys, you know, most people, almost everyone. Or your pancreas makes insulin.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  But they're very different all throughout the world, right?
3. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, there's totalitarian societies-
5. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah, no, no s-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  ... there's-
7. NCNicholas Christakis
  No, so here's the point.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  No?
9. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah, so here's what, here's the argument. You look around the world-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
11. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... and, um, the way, the example I give is that yes, there's huge cultural variation around the world, just like you said, totalitarian societies, there's, people have different foods and they have different ways of dressing and there's enormous cultural variation, and it's marvelous and interesting and obvious to anybody. But I think we're missing the forest from the trees. To me, this is like you and I are sitting on a plane, and we look at a, a hill that's 300 feet and 900 feet, and we say those are very different hills.But actually, if we took a step back, we would see that we're on, we were on a plateau, and one was a mountain that was 10,300 feet, and another was a mountain that was 10,900 feet. And actually, there, there are these m- much more deep and fundamental plate tectonic forces that are creating these two mountains that are very similar, but we are just focused on the superficial top. So the argument in the book is that everywhere in the world, people have friendship, people love their partners, people cooperate, people teach each other. These are fundamental common principles shared by everyone. Even though there's also a lot of variation.
37:45 – 46:21
How regimes and communes weaken bonds: family, sex rules, and conformity
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Even in a place like North Korea?
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes. Now North Korea, th- that state... So totalitarian states apply huge cultural pressure to suppress this innate tendency. It's like, it's like a religious, you need a lot of belief in God to suppress your innate desire to have sex, right?
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  So you can have a belief system that's very powerful that kind of prevents you, squashes what would otherwise be a kind of inescapable inclination you have. So totalitarian regimes, and this is discussed in the book too, they are very threatened by the institution of the family. They're threatened. You need to owe your loyalty to the state, not to your family, not to your friends. And so they have a series of institutions that, you know, everyone is Comrade, everyone gets called Comrade, for example. Or, or, uh, they're, th- a lotta, a lotta times... Well, I won't, I don't wanna, I don't know if I wanna speak at the state level. Let me, let me take it down a notch to communes. So if you think about communes, if you're gonna make a commune of people and you want them to feel real loyalty to the commune, one way you can do that is y- you want to, uh, reduce the commitment people have to their partners, let's say, their, their mates. And in order to do that, you can go to one of two extremes. Either you can prohibit sex, like the Shakers, and you say, "Okay, no one's gonna have sex with anyone, because we're all in a commune and we all love each other, and we're not gonna have special love for particular people." Or you could go to the other extreme and you can have polyamory, say, "Everyone's gonna have sex with everyone else." Once again, you see, that subverts the special relationship that people might form with particular individuals. And so both of those strategies, even though they're opposite, are attempting to do the same thing, which is to break down real relationships, face-to-face relationship between individuals, so that you can have a commitment to this higher group.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  And that's what totalitarian states also face the same dilemma, and that's also why, incidentally, a lot of those states try to, um, re- uh, reduce gender differences, right? They, like, you know, the Mao jacket, the w- men and women all were wearing the simi- similar kind of attire, for instance, uh, because they want to have people see themselves as interchangeable and not as individuals, and relationships not be particular.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Did you study cults?
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  A little bit. Um, not a lot. Uh, there's some, I talk a little bit in the book about cults, but I don't really need to get t- to cults in order to make the arguments that I'm making.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  No, I mean, not even-
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... just to make arguments, just to, to compare, th- 'cause that is essentially like, in particularly the Rajneesh, uh, Cult-
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  Uh-huh.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... Oregon, the Wild Wild West-
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  ... or Wild Wild Country documentary on Netflix. Did you see that?
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  No, I haven't.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  It's fantastic. They essentially, uh, took over an entire town and started busing in homeless people to vote, so that they can-
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  Oh, I read about th-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  I know about this, yes.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  It's really quite amazing.
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  And th- what they did was really weird, you know? I mean, for, uh, there's moments in the documentary where you're like, "Wow, maybe they're onto something."
24. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  And then of course, it goes completely sideways.
26. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  They wind up poisoning people.
28. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  And it's chaos.
30. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm-hmm.
46:21 – 1:07:38
Speech vs violence, deplatforming, and why open debate prevents backlash
1. NCNicholas Christakis
  people can, the ground rules are clear, so, you know, you can't, there's no physical contact allowed, right? So we do- we draw a bright-line distinction between words and deeds. So I completely reject the idea that words are, um-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Violent.
3. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... violent. Yeah, totally.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. NCNicholas Christakis
  I totally reject that. Uh, and, and because we have different words for it, they're two different things (laughs) . Totally different.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
7. NCNicholas Christakis
  Uh, we, we, so grounds are, you know, I can't touch you, but I can speak. Uh, other ground rules are that we are committed to open expression. A good ground rule would be that we grant positive intent, we grant good intent, that is to say I try to put what you're saying in the most favorable light. First, I think about it, I say, "Okay, now wait a minute, what is he saying? What does he mean by that? He might-"
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
9. NCNicholas Christakis
  Uh, now, you might be an idiot, a person may be an idiot. They may be vile, they may be violent, they may be wrong, you know, all of those things are also possible. But that's not the first go-to. Um, so anyway, if we set those ground rules, I think, I believe strongly that in the marketplace of ideas, truth will out, um, a- and, and righteousness will out. That's, that's what I think. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in fact what we need is a benevolent dictator who, you know, comes down and tells us all what to think and do. But that's not the world I wanna live in.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, the benevolent dictator idea is, what does that come from? Like why, is it just because it's, that's really been the only way that society has actually functioned for most of the past few thousand years?
11. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, I think people have always fantasized, right? Every, I mean-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... S- Plato talks about this, I mean, people look around and they think, "Situation is not so great."
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
15. NCNicholas Christakis
  "I really wish there was a strong man that would come down and fix it."
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
17. NCNicholas Christakis
  Um, it's very tempting-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  And this is the, this is the inclination towards Trump.
19. NCNicholas Christakis
  I think in some part, yes.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. NCNicholas Christakis
  Trumpism is a little bit about this fantasy that, that we will, um, you know, that, that the way out is to have a kind of imposition from above. And I think that's very dangerous, actually. And the sa- we were talking about it earlier, in college campuses, it's the same principle, right? Like, the idea that Big Daddy is gonna come down and tell us what to do and fix the situation, I think is undemocratic in the end. And dangerous.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  But Big Daddy has to follow the rules that these children want. I mean, this is part of the issue with, uh, the idea of-
23. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  ... words equal violence.
25. NCNicholas Christakis
  Mm.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, this is not a well-thought-through idea. And this is an idea that is-
27. NCNicholas Christakis
  Words-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... really incredible.
29. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... can lead to violence.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Sure.
1:07:38 – 1:37:49
Nature, nurture, and self-domestication: why humans got (somewhat) nicer
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, please do.
2. NCNicholas Christakis
  We don't just need, uh... We don't just use culture for that purpose. There, there's an argument in the book that we humans have, have domesticated ourselves. So-If you look at, if you compare, uh, dogs to wolves, and domesticated cats to wild cats from which they descended, or, uh, guinea pigs to the wild guinea pigs from which they descended, or, or horses to w-, uh, to the wild horses to which they descended, and if you, again and again, you compare these couplets, these pairs, you find that the domesticated version of these animals are much more placid, much more peaceful. They also tend to have floppy ears, they have piebald fur, so guinea pigs and dogs and cows all have splotchy black, white, and brown fur. Why is that? The animals from which they evolved didn't have those, that kind of splotchiness. So, uh, and they become much more, uh, peaceful. If you compare human beings, and, but they had a, a, a, tho- those animals were domesticated by humans. Like, I deliberately allowed the reproduction of this member of the litter and not that member because this member was, was, was nicer. And so across time, we evolve a more, a domesticated version of the ancestral species. So we get, you know, we get my miniature Dachshund from a wolf, like the one, like the kind of things that were photographed out in your studio, here.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
4. NCNicholas Christakis
  Crazy transition. Uh, now, if you look at humans and you compare us to, uh, to the w- the non-, to our ancestors, or to other primates, for all the world, it looks like we have been domesticated. We are more peaceful and placid, we have sex outside, non-reproductive sex is another thing. So these domesticated animals will have sex, uh, even when it's not time to reproduce. Uh, we, uh, we, um, k- uh, t- w- our tails, we don't have tails anymore, but our tails ha- get shortened. There are all these, th- features that we have, these, these behavioral qualities and these physical properties that we have, are, are, are, we get a feminization of our faces, our jaws become smaller. Like, if you look at, you compare, uh, these domesticated animals to their non-domesticated ancestors, the domesticated version are less violent. So we lose a lot of the traits that physical and, and, uh, um, psychological traits associated with violence. But there was no one that domesticated us, so the theory is, the question is how? How did that happen? And one of the theories that's discussed in, in, uh, in Blueprint, and that's advanced by other scientists, this is not my work, is that we self domesticated, and that what happened over the cent- over the millennia, over millions of years, is that weaker individuals in our groups, when one individual became too autocratic and too violent and too powerful, they banded together and killed that guy. And so over time, we were killing the more violent members of our species, weeding out those people, and therefore, the gene pool changed across time, and we self domesticated. We are more peaceful today than we would have been because we domesticated ourselves. And this is one of the arguments that's also made to help explain the origins of goodness, actually.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  And the origins of cooperation, because-
6. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  ... it would take a few good people-
8. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to kill the bad person-
10. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... that's running everything that's evil.
12. NCNicholas Christakis
  Correct.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
14. NCNicholas Christakis
  That's exactly right.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Recreational sex does occur in bonobos, which is-
16. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... really weird, isn't it?
18. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  'Cause they're so similar to regular chimps.
20. NCNicholas Christakis
  Yes, but they're not the same species.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
22. NCNicholas Christakis
  They also have homosexual sex, uh, they use sex, uh, to make up.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
24. NCNicholas Christakis
  You know, so- uh, it, it's, yeah, they're very, uh, licentious, uh, species, that's exactly right. And, and, and, and bonobos are felt to be a self domesticated chimpanzee. So the simi- so bonobos are to chimps as, uh, as let's say dogs are to wolves, and, but there was, um, the dogs, we domesticated. The bonobos self domesticated, is the theory.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Do they know why or how?
26. NCNicholas Christakis
  Well, the theory is that they did it, like we were saying, by weeding out-
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
28. NCNicholas Christakis
  ... killing the more aggressive members. It was, what we know must have happened is that the nicer guys must have been able to have more offspring, so the gene pool changed over time because of the differential success of the, of the, of the nicer guys. Now, people have looked at this even in human societies, they've looked, for instance, there's a study I talk about in the book of different pathways to reproductive success amongst the Tsimane, which is a group in Amazonia, and other societies are similar. So you can either be, like, big and strong, or you can be charismatic and have useful knowledge. In both ways, you have more children.